


Dug In

by BadAtPennames



Series: Entrenched [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Explicit Language, M/M, Oblivious Eren Yeager, One-Sided Relationship, WWI setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadAtPennames/pseuds/BadAtPennames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a crappy war, Levi has a shitty day.  His resistance is frayed and resilience is a foreign word.  Naturally, it's Eren's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dug In

**Author's Note:**

> It should probably be mentioned that this is a part two. You can read this without reading the other, but the first might provide some context.
> 
> Here is a trench diagram for a visual example: http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW1/trenches.htm Trench construction varied wildly depending on army, country, and location therein so I had a lot of wiggle room.

Levi pulled back carefully, knife tip held between his thumb and his forefinger, eyes unblinking on his target.  He whipped his arm straight, body rocking forward, knife flying towards his mark.  He held the stance for a moment, brows dipped down as he watched the target scurry away, leaving the majority of its severed tail behind, pinned by Levi’s weapon.

He huffed out his annoyance and stalked forward, bending down to collect the knife and visually inspect the blade for any new damage.

“Close,” Eren said as he walked up behind him.  “I never thought I’d want to kill anything as much as enemy soldiers, but then I came to this beautiful pit paradise only to find it was already occupied by rats.”

Levi pulled a kerchief out of his pocket and wiped down the blade of the knife before sliding it back into sheaf on his belt.

“I thought you were digging trenches today.”  Or last night would be more accurate, since most of the work in the trenches was done in the dark when the enemy couldn’t see what you were doing.  The soldiers had a habit of talking like they weren’t nocturnal.

“I dig trenches every day.”

“Yesterday you were filling sandbags,” Levi pointed out.

“For trenches.”

“The day before you were building fire steps.”

“Again, for trenches.  You are unusually good at keeping tabs on people.”

“Just you.”  Levi offered a slight smile as he finally turned his eyes to rest on Eren.   A onceover of the younger soldier certainly suggested that he had spent at least some part of his night wielding a shovel.  It was beyond Levi how someone could excavate a channel in the earth seemingly by absorbing all the dirt into their uniform.  He wondered if he were to shake Eren if it would all fall out into an impassible wall of sediment where they stood.

“I think this war is getting to you.  I know for a fact that I am not that interesting.”

“I am sadly aware.”

Eren’s mouth quirked up and he moved closer to a more normal speaking distance.  Levi, for his part, did his best to pretend the proximity had no effect on him.  Eren’s body always felt magnetic to Levi.

“It’s going to rain tonight.”

“Predicting the weather now?” Levi asked.

“I was a farmer back home.  We learn to read the weather.”

“I thought you said you were a doctor’s assistant.”

“I was that too.  My father was a doctor.  I would tag along on house calls with him when I was a kid.”

“So why didn’t you become a doctor?”

“I didn’t want to.”

Levi raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Eren.

“You’d rather play in the dirt.”  It sounded like an accusation.

“Growing things and taking care of livestock are better than having sick people sneeze in your face.  My friend Armin-”

“The blond kid you’re always around?”

“Yeah.  His grandpa owned a farm and he paid us to help work as farmhands.”

“Then you convinced his grandson to join the army with you so you can play in another country’s dirt.”

Eren held up his hands and laughed.

“Armin joined the army because he wanted to see the world.”

“He can’t even see over the lip of the trench.”

“Well at least his head won’t get shot off then.”

“I think I’d rather get shot in the head than die from rat disease,” Levi mused. 

“I agree,” Eren said solemnly, but his eyes were crinkled in mirth when they landed on his companion.

For a terrifying moment Levi found himself caught in that gaze.  He had to physically step away from the other soldier in an effort to break whatever spell was trying to creep over his skin. 

“If it’s going to rain tonight, then shouldn’t you be working to keep this damn trench from flooding?”

“That would be like trying to fight a bull with a toothpick.”

“You’re telling me we’re all going to drown in our sleep later.”

“Don’t go to sleep.  Then you can drown while you’re awake.”

Levi couldn’t stop the chuckle, which only got worse when he caught sight of Eren’s grin, which led to looking at Eren’s eyes again.  They were like fucking honey traps.  His amusement faded at that point and he started speaking to distract himself, saying the first thing to enter his head that didn’t sound like flirtation.  Although he flirted all the time and Eren never picked seemed to pick up on it.

“Erwin said mail came in this morning,” he rushed out, more or less satisfied with the words that tumbled out of his mouth.  As long as it wasn’t any sort of awkwardly blunt confession it was a win.  He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he was feeling unusually weak to Eren’s presence today.  It could be because he was usually trying to sleep by this point in the day.

The younger soldier didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss.  Typical.  Instead, he lit up at the prospect of news from home, like the sun had sought out specifically his face to shine on.

Levi was beginning to suspect he might have a heart condition.

“Really?  Where do they have it?”

“Back on the supply line.”

“Well, then,” Eren said, adjusting how his rifle sat across his back before resolutely marching past Levi.

“Are you sure you aren’t supposed to be tossing dirt around?”

Eren paused and glanced back, “You seem very concerned about what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“What _are_ you supposed to be doing?” Levi asked.

“Right now?  Nothing.”

Levi gave him the flattest look in his repertoire.

For his part, Eren squirmed only slightly before he turned around fully.

“Yeager,” Levi said, the name every bit a command.

Eren sighed and faced him again.

“I was digging out the trench and then I was told I had the rest of the day free.”

“Why would they tell you that?”

“I was digging the trench out with Kirschtein.”

There was a moment of silence, because the explanation that would have otherwise filled it was suddenly completely unnecessary.

“What idiot keeps assigning you two details together?”

“Shadis.”

“Tell him I said he’s an idiot.”

“With all due respect, no.  After the next attack my dead body would be discovered.  Miraculously, it would be found all the way back by the ammo dump, bludgeoned to death despite no enemy forces having advanced that far.”

“That _would_ be a pity,” Levi said, his tone of voice implying the opposite.

Eren laughed, reached back and grabbed the older man’s arm, and pulled him into walking next to him, despite how narrow the space was between the revetments of the trench. 

“I take it your only assignment for the rest of the day is staying out of sight of Shadis, then?”

“I’m also not allowed to be near Jean.  He was supposed to stay on the west side of the trench and I was supposed to stay on the east.”

“ _This_ _is_ the west.”

Eren’s hand reached up to scratch at his ear, brushing against Levi as he did so.  The contact tingled all the way up his arm and into his _brain_.  His breath might have caught.  Dear God, was he asthmatic now, too?

“Well, once we were out of sight, Jean told me he wanted to meet up with a few of the guys that had a card game going on over there and I figured I’d come see you, so we switched.”

Levi’s pulse tried jumping out of his skin for a moment.  The idea that Eren would engage in a truce with Jean Kirschtein to come see him caused the strangest sensation to steamroll his body.  He definitely felt flattened.  He swallowed and began speaking to disguise that his body was trying to breathe too quickly.

“So you two can get along.”

Eren shrugged.

“When it’s mutually beneficial.”

This was certainly not a comment that warranted getting worked up over anymore than the explanation before it and for a brief moment Levi thought he might be dead, because his heart didn’t beat.  At all.  Of course, when it did start again a second later, it seemed to think that going into a frenzied attack against his ribcage was the best course of action. 

He was beginning to give serious thought to the idea that something was wrong with him because innocuous remarks from Eren normally didn’t have such a ridiculous effect on his body.  He would say it was because he wasn’t sleeping well or that he ate something that didn’t agree with him, but that was the status quo from the very first day he put on a uniform and stepped onto a battlefield.

Maybe he was finally experiencing shell shock. 

Or more likely, he had caught something from all the shitty rats.

Just when he thought he had himself internally under control, another soldier came from the opposite direction, forcing Levi and Eren to press close together to allow everyone to pass through the narrow confines of the channel.  For a moment Levi could feel heat and hard lines beneath uniform and gear and he drew in a quick breath.   

He caught a full whiff of Eren and it felt like a he received an electric shock from the base of his skull down to his tailbone, which was completely stupid because the younger soldier didn’t even smell good.  He smelled mostly like wet soil, in the way everything around them smelled like wet soil.  There was also an undercurrent of old sweat -likely from the night’s excavations, stale cigarettes and coffee.

The last two were definitely from early this morning when Eren had snuck away for a quick break and Levi had not been nearly at his mercy.  Clearly something catastrophic had occurred between then and now. 

There had been the brief exchange of gunfire between the enemy forces and their own, but that occurred every morning and evening.  It was almost like saying ‘Good morning, we’re still here’ and ‘Good night, we’ll hear from you tomorrow’.  Except with bullets.  Levi had then spent entirely too long arguing with Dietrich back on the supply line because of an obscure order he received from Erwin, which was a fairly accurate description of all orders from Erwin.  He then disassembled his rifle to clean out the dirt that built up inside no matter what precautions he took.  After that, he killed rats.

Lots of them.  He had a nice pile growing of their dead bodies.  One of his most productive days in the war.

None of that explained why this morning he could have a normal conversation with the younger soldier and come away feeling like someone had poured warm oil across his chest -essentially the feeling he had every morning after coffee with Eren, and now the kid shows up out of the blue, and he’s having what appear to be serious heart palpitations over absolutely nothing.

They wound their way to the back and walked up the incline to one of the trench’s exits.  From that point, the frontline was obscured by growths of trees and natural undulations in the field’s topography that had nothing to do with soldiers excavating it like gophers.  At the relative safety of the rear were scattered constructions of canvas, corrugated metal, and wood housing supplies and paper pushers, the field kitchen, carts, and a few tanks.  Rudimentary stables housed a variety of saddle and draft horses.  A well-used road led away towards the river.

Eren located the soldier in charge of the mail.  A few minutes of shuffling through piles of paper and boxes and then the man was handing them envelopes.  Two letters for Eren and one for Levi.

“Who’s it from?” Eren asked.

Levi glanced at the return address.

“A friend I used to work with before the war.”

Eren looked at his own mail.  Levi glanced over and saw Grisha and Carla Yeager written neatly on the corner of the top piece of correspondence, deducing that it was likely the names of Eren’s parents.  Then the younger soldier slid it behind the other envelope and Levi read ‘Mikasa Ackerman’ written very precisely as the sender.

Levi felt as though any liquid that may have previously resided in his face dropped down to his feet, making them twice as heavy where he stood. 

Eren gave a short, sharp smile as he glanced at the sender’s name.  Levi’s chest was abruptly cold and a feeling suspiciously similar to dread was creeping across his upper back.

While Eren had never mentioned having a girl back home, that certainly didn’t mean there wasn’t one.  Why wouldn’t he have a girlfriend?  He was young, determined… irresistibly attractive for some baffling reason.  He had a strangely magnetic personality that irritated Levi to no end.  Then there were those _eyes_ … 

Levi quickly looked anywhere but Eren.

It wouldn’t be the first time a soldier neglected to mention someone significant in their lives.  Some people didn’t like to talk about their families, their wives or girlfriends; because thinking about home made it impossible not to worry about people you weren’t around to support.

Levi stared at the clinical print and felt an instant animosity towards the person that wrote it.  His chest felt tight directly over his sternum, like his body was trying to keep his breastbone from falling and crushing the organ beneath it.  He tried to tell himself it wasn’t jealousy.

“Ackerman?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t sound half so strained as he thought it did.

“Hmm?  Oh, she’s a nurse.”  That really didn’t tell Levi anything at all.  Really.

“A nurse.”

“Yeah,” Eren said, frowning as he turned to look at Levi, then frowning more when he caught sight of his face, “Are you okay?  You’re looking… peaked.”

“Everyone here looks like that.”

“What’s normal for everyone else doesn’t usually apply to you.  Did you touch any of the rats you killed?”

Levi did his best to convey how idiotic he found that question with his expression alone.  If there were two things they had in abundance it was bullets and shovels, one of which could pick up and sling rat corpses over the top of the trench like a catapult.

Eren laughed and stuck his letters inside the shirt of his uniform. 

“Why don’t you come with me?  I think I know something that will help get the color back in your face,” he said, gesturing with his hand for Levi to follow.

Eren led them to a veteran soldier named Moblit who had a bottle of liquid that would do more than return the color to a person’s face.  A few minutes later, they were crouching behind some supply carts on a patch of grass and passing said bottle back and forth.

“I should get in fights with Jean every day.  This is fun.”

“You _do_ get in fights with Kirschtein every day.”

“Not _every_ day.”

“Don’t be modest now,” Levi said, tilting his head back and taking a swallow before holding the bottle out to Eren.

“I didn’t fight with him yesterday.”

“Did you see him yesterday?”

“…From a distance.”

Levi watched as Eren raised the bottle to his lips and his adam’s apple moved hypnotically when he swallowed.  He handed it back to Levi and started speaking.

“Jean’s actually a great guy.  He is.  Really,” Eren paused, gathering his thoughts.  “He just says stupid things.”

“So he’s like you.”

“Aw, thanks.  You’re a great guy, too,” Eren said, putting a hand on Levi’s shoulder and leaning in.  Levi hadn’t quite meant that as the compliment Eren took it as, but when the younger soldier gave him that puppy smile and came just a little too close to Levi’s face, the shorter man felt like his heart just got juiced.  As though every last drop was twisted out.  Absently he noted that he didn’t appear to be breathing, either.

Levi dropped his gaze from ensnaring eyes but got caught on a full mouth instead.  It was a remarkably hot day at the moment.  Had a warm front come in?  He tugged lightly at the collar of his shirt, hoping for some ventilation.

The longer Eren hovered there with his flushed face and slightly unfocused eyes, the more Levi was convinced that drinking in the middle of the day was actually a terrible idea.  He stood up abruptly causing Eren to fall to the side and turned the bottle over, pouring out the rest of its contents before he did something regrettable. 

Like do the polar opposite of standing up.  For a moment he had been very tempted to push Eren on his back and do the polar opposite of standing up on top of him. 

His heart had glued itself to the inside of his ribs.  It felt like it might be stuck there.  Was it even beating anymore or were the valves doing their impression of open floodgates?

Eren blinked up at him.

“Why did you pour it out?”

“We’re supposed to be fighting a war.”  That sounded like a reason.  It might even have merit.

“Yes.  We do that by living in a rat-infested mud pit and guarding a fucking bridge.  Sometimes the guys over there,” Eren pointed in the general direction of no man’s land, “they come up out of their rat-infested mud pit and try to come over and visit us.  Possibly to see if our rats are any bigger than theirs.  Then we shoot at them because we’re not friendly and we don’t want visitors.  We are also fiercely protective of information on the size of our rats.”

“It’s difficult to shoot when you can’t see straight,” Levi stated pointedly.

“Doesn’t seem to matter.  You have enough guys shooting eventually someone’s going to get lucky.”

“You’re going to go lie down and sleep this off before you have to report back to Shadis tomorrow.”   Really they should both be trying to sleep while they had the chance.

“It’s just after lunch right now.”

“Then you’ll have plenty of time to get sober.” 

Eren huffed then raised a hand.

“Help me up?”

Levi rolled his eyes and grasped Eren’s _warm_ forearm, but before he could tug upwards, he was being forcefully pulled down.  He had a very brief sensation of falling and his arms shot out automatically.  Once he could orient himself he found that he was in the very position he had been trying to avoid for both the best and worst few seconds of his entire life before Eren pushed him off.  His gear clattered as much as his heart.

“Neither one of us can do anything if we’re drunk, so we might as well en joy the clouds.”

“I am not going to listen to you again,” Levi said, taking a deep breath as he tried to regain some semblance of authority over his body.  Alcohol impeded the progress.

“Don’t you like clouds?”

“I am drunk and laying on everything I’ve ever been issued.  This is your fault.”

“You outrank me.”

Eren brought up an excellent point.  If there were any negative repercussions to come from this, Levi would get the brunt of it.  While Eren wasn’t directly reportable to him, Levi had the superior rank. 

“Which makes it all the more ridiculous that I allowed you to lead me astray.”

Eren let out a giggle, high and breathless.  It was inappropriately enchanting.

“If they wanted to kick out every soldier who got blotto from what they had tucked away, there wouldn’t be anyone left to fight this war.”

“They don’t kick you out for being drunk.  They give you the worst detail they can find and have you work it when you are hungover while they shout at you.”

“If we stay here and watch the clouds, no one will know.”

Levi turned his head and looked at Eren, whose face looked completely at ease as he gazed up at the sky.  The problem lay in the fact that Levi didn’t want to watch things, he wanted to do them, specifically to Eren.  As the alcohol that rested in his belly slowly filtered into his blood stream, he was convincing himself more and more that it was a good idea.

Except that it wasn’t.  For some reason.  Possibly several reasons.  He sort of knew what they were but he was having trouble attaching any importance to them.

Levi propped himself up on his elbow, wavering slightly, watching Eren.  The younger soldier’s eyes were on the sky above him, but his mind was likely somewhere else and his face had an idiotic smile on it.  He looked ridiculously good.

There was that weird magnetic pull again.

Levi began to lean down towards the oblivious younger soldier, too much heat in his head and pulse thundering in his ears.  Then Eren raised his hand and reached into his own shirt to pull out the letters from earlier.

The older man froze on the spot; every fiber that made up his body screaming for a tactical retreat as Eren clumsily opened the envelope and drew out the letter from Mikasa.  The boy unfolded it and his eyes leapt to the top of the page.  Levi’s mind cleared like he fell through a frozen lake.

Eren knitted his eyebrows.

“Fuck, I’m too drunk to read.”

Feeling a good deal more sober, Levi pulled himself up into a sitting position.  He could feel the radiant heat of the younger soldier’s body and was completely mystified as to how he had gotten so close to Eren.  They were nearly touching along the entire length of their bodies and considering how much room was around them, there really was no call for it. 

He quickly stood up and Eren gave him a confused look.

“I was supposed to meet with Erwin.” This was a bald-faced lie.

Eren nodded and sat up, but Levi was already walking briskly away.

“I’ll come find you for supper!” Eren called after him and for once Levi cursed the routine that had them meeting in the mornings and the evenings.  It was becoming less like a highlight to his day and more like Chinese water torture.

He needed a cigarette.

Despite not actually having an appointment with Erwin, a few minutes later Levi found himself entering the man’s den of operations.

Erwin glanced up and was about to turn his attention back to whatever missive he held in his hand, when he gave Levi a second, more probing look.

“Rough day?”

“Aren’t they all?”

“Have a seat,” Erwin gestured, “Try not to stumble.”

Levi didn’t argue and slumped down into the indicated chair.  One of the best things about Erwin was that he knew when not to pry.  Of course, it was entirely likely that he already had some inkling as to the cause for Levi’s unusual behavior.

“I understand Yeager was banned from Shadis’ trench expansion today.”

Scratch the part about Erwin knowing not to pry, and also any part where he may have been described as useful or a decent human being.

“So I heard,” Levi replied, because he could do his best and try to dart around this conversation.

“He then disappeared entirely.  Odd that I heard you were nowhere to be seen as well.”

“Hmm.  What a coincidence.”

As soon as it was out of his mouth, Levi had the distinct impression that his answer sounded like admittance rather than the sly evasion he had intended. 

“Well, I hope you spent your time wisely,” Erwin said, and Levi was of the opinion that the tone of suggestion in there was overly blatant.

He scowled, but the commander had already turned his attention back to what he had been reading and failed to notice.

Levi chose to spend his afternoon in a vague simmer until the alcohol gradually wore off and a headache replaced it in equal measure.  Erwin was not sympathetic.

It was verging into early evening when Levi stepped back out into the open air.  He thought he would go check on the progress of the trench that was being extended mostly because he knew Eren would avoid it.  He needed some room to breathe.

He had just caught sight of Shadis in the fading light of day when the first thunder of artillery sounded in the distance. 

Instinctually, everyone hunkered lower, ducking into the archways of bolt holes, adjusting their helmets and readying their rifles.  There was a loud impact, shouts, another echoed shot followed by another and another until Levi was no longer paying attention to how many were going off and landing.    

Levi was sharply irritated because they hadn’t had an actual attack for days and the last few had been mild.  At the moment, though, his head was splitting apart, his mouth tasted like he had been chewing on a sock, and he had neglected to get any sleep.  Of course they would choose to launch a full-out assault now.

Chunks of earth sprayed from behind him, whipping past his head when the next one landed with a booming crash.  He felt his teeth rattle and the first actual jolt of adrenaline shot through him because that one was close.  The tremors of it had swept through his bones.  He was already running along the trench to get to a better position when he heard a shout louder than the rest.

“Gas!  Put on your masks!”

Levi stopped, blood running cold and a different set of instincts took over.  His helmet thrown off, he began pulling out his gas mask, hoping he hadn’t already breathed some in.  If it was chlorine or phosgene, the effects would appear quickly, but mustard gas was more lethal and could take hours to present symptoms.  He had seen soldiers who had been exposed; chemically created blisters on their skin, vomiting all over themselves, and twitching like they were shot through with an electrical current.

Mask donned, he grabbed a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on.  Then he replaced his helmet, giving himself a brief onceover to see if any skin was exposed.  He unslung his rifle and ran towards the frontline trench.  As soon as the artillery rounds were done and the gas flowed through the trenches, the enemy troops would rush across no man’s land in an infantry assault.

Around him shells continued to fall.  Occasional impacts shook him badly enough he wasn’t sure he’d keep his footing.  Periodically, it would rain showers of dirt.  He ran with his head ducked low, skirting around the traverses until he hit a communication trench leading to the frontline. 

Technically he was supposed to be in the support trench for another two days yet, but this really stupid soldier he knew ran straight to the frontline for every attack, no matter where he was assigned.  Eren and Levi were on the same rotation, but since the other moron didn’t understand the definition of rotation Levi always found himself rushing towards death after Eren.  

Once at the foremost trench, he dodged into a bolt hole.  The artillery faded to a background hum, punctured now and again by a sharp scream.  A few other soldiers he vaguely recognized shared the space with him, tensed.  They looked far more grim than afraid under their gas masks.  Their breaths through the filters eerily audible.  Any reaction to the attacks was pushed into the back of their minds until it was over and it was safe to feel terror again. 

The number of shell impacts began to drop as the attack began to shift into its second part. 

He climbed back out into the corridor of the trench, hopped up onto an open fire step and rested his rifle on top of the sandbags at the lip.  He kept his head low, eyes searching out from the face piece of his gas mask, waiting for the first sight of approaching men.  He would more than likely hear their bullets thudding into the dirt around him before he saw them.  Around him the other soldiers had followed him out to take up positions on either side.  They were deathly silent, waiting, looking like an alien species as they peered out from the lenses of their gas masks.

Levi always felt calmest during the moments between the artillery and the first sight of a foreign uniform.  There was only one thing he needed to do, and that was to keep his eyes open in the low light of dusk and wait.  Taking a shit required more thought and coordination.  It was the easiest thing he would ever have to do in his life in terms of the simplicity of the action.  It was also the most difficult, but only ever after the fact.

Levi was focused, the stock of his rifle firm against his body.  Breathe in, breathe out. 

He found himself immensely thankful he had stripped his rifle down and cleaned all the dirt that had built up that morning.  A jammed weapon when enemy soldiers are trying to scramble down into your mud pit did not result in a good day.  Assuming they made it past the lines of barbed wire lovingly strung out in front of the trenches.  There were hopes of ensnaring anyone who tried to cross and mangling their legs.

Across the distance between the two forces the gloom of evening had settled.  At some point, a breeze had picked up.  Levi hoped it would push the gas away.

His eyes swept across no-man’s land again. 

Then an image of Eren barged into his head and Levi’s body drained of heat.  It felt like a stream of cold oil ran down his back and he found himself murmuring a litany of curses.

“You better have your fucking gas mask on, you little shit.  When I find you, I am going to murder you myself for making me fucking worry.  I will beat the literal shit out of you.”

This was the first time Levi could remember when he wasn’t solely focused on the attack he was in the middle of.  Without Eren in his sight, he was uneasy.  As the seconds ticked by, that feeling grew.  More than once Levi had needed to pull the kid down and pin him to a revetment to keep him from getting his head shot off.  If no one was around to shove Eren into shelter when the artillery started he was liable to get hit with something.  The younger soldier unerringly attracted trouble.  Repulsive images flashed through Levi’s mind.  Was the kid coughing from gas or screaming in agony from a body blasted apart? 

Was he even capable of sound and movement or was he already another corpse?  Would a man in uniform arrive on his mother’s doorstep in a few weeks with a letter and condolences?

 In that moment, Levi realized there was nothing worse than not knowing whether someone you cared about was alive or dead.  The only thing he could do was wait, pressed against a cover of sandbags.

Then there were zipping sounds in the air around him and thuds accompanied by sprays of earth.  He pulled his rifle more tightly into the hollow of his shoulder and lowered his head to see down the rear sight.  Shouts sounded from further down on either side of the trench...

His eye caught on movement and his trigger finger readied, his breathing automatically slowed and evened.  Boots hit the ground in scrapes and thuds ahead of him. Then he saw them.  He exhaled, set his aim, and fired.  Around him more weapons fired, and the unmistakable tatter of the machine guns from their nests erupted above and behind him.

He didn’t know if any of his bullets actually hit their marks or if it was the fire of his comrades that made the advancing soldiers drop.  Foreign uniforms stumbled to the ground, gasping.  A startled cry somewhere to his right was followed by one of his allies crashing into the back wall and slumping to the bottom of the trench.  Someone else jumped down to tend to him if they could.  The gas mask blocked the smell of blood.

How much time had passed while he endlessly cycled through firing, ducking down and reloading, then popping up again to repeat he wasn’t sure.  He had a suspicion it was simultaneously forever and an instant.  Emptied shells clinked around his boots, heated from the chamber of his rifle.

Then he was waiting for the next soldier to come charging except it didn’t happen.  He waited.  The soldiers on his sides were tense, all shouting quieted.  Every ear was strained towards the field in front of them, listening for footfalls. 

All they heard were men dying.

No one else approached.

Levi let out a breath and sank down, sitting on the fire step and trying to figure out if he had been shot and was currently bleeding to death.  He didn’t feel like he was dying.  Then again, he had never died before so he wasn’t much of an expert.  He half-heartedly drug a hand across his chest to see if pain sparked up anywhere.  When his exam failed to hurt, he thought he was probably okay.

He let his head swing to one side, then the other.  He wasn’t sure about anywhere else, but his section of the trench hadn’t hosted any enemy forces.  If they had broken through elsewhere, they had failed to overrun anything.

There was a small tap on his shoulder.  Then another on his helmet. 

It took him a moment to realize he was getting wet.  A drop of water hit the lens above his right eye and streaked down.  It was raining.  Relief was a stark feeling among his general numbness.  The gasses that were probably still hovering on the bottom of the trenches were water soluble.  Once everything was sufficiently wet, they would be fairly safe from its effects.  Provided they hadn’t inhaled anything before donning their masks.

Levi was suddenly exhausted; the adrenaline that had invaded his body was now filtering away in a mass exodus.  He felt like he could lie down on the dirty fire step and fall asleep.  He shifted, and noticed his rifle was still clutched in his hands.  He blinked at it like he didn’t know what it was and slowly uncurled his fingers from their death grip around the barrel, then from the gun stock just behind the trigger.  He flexed his hands, feeling distantly that they were stiff and aching. 

A thought shoved its way into his sluggish mind.

“Eren,” Levi gasped out, and he was on his feet, running through the corridor of dirt and wooden slats.  The terror from before was immediately pounding again in his chest and he felt nausea climb up his esophagus to rest heavily at the back of his throat.

His eyes were razor sharp on every soldier he passed, a stake of icy dread every time he saw one slumped to the ground.  Then he’s see their face wasn’t Eren’s.  The guilt from his relief every time would assault him later.

He dashed from one end to the other of the frontline.  No Eren. 

 A hard lump formed in his throat.

He took a breath before dodging into a communication trench that led back to the support trench.  He ducked around any injured soldiers that were being transported back, convulsing with gas exposure or gunshot trauma.  When the support trench yielded no luck and the rain started to pour, Levi ran into a bunker.  It took a moment for him to realize it was Erwin’s command center.

The bunker itself was a hornets’ nest.  Soldiers were running in and out, giving reports on casualties and equipment damage.  The command staff were alternatively writing furiously in ledgers and on rosters.  They shouted at each other, trying to get an accurate assessment of the damage incurred in the attack.  Erwin himself was busy on a field telephone, reading off numbers that Mike shoved at him.  The inside of the bunker would swarm until every soldier, alive or dead, was accounted for, the field guns and machine guns were known to be damaged or in serviceable condition, and where and what damage there was to the trench.

Then reconstruction and repairs would begin.

Surgeries and last rites were already underway.

Erwin looked up, saw Levi standing like an idiot just inside the door, dripping water as soldiers shuffled in and out around him, and pursed his lips.  He gave a very careful shake of his head, shoulders shrugging upwards to indicate he hadn’t received word one way or the other.  Levi turned around and left.

Water was already pooling up in the sump and over the duck boards.  It sloshed around every footfall as Levi methodically made his way deeper to the reserve trench.  It was fully dark now and he stumbled a few times, the rainclouds blocking most of the light from the moon.  A few kerosene lamps were being lit around him as soldiers scurried by, giving him irregular flashes of illumination.

None of them were Eren.

Levi stopped where he was and took a deep breath.  His body shook as his lungs took in the air.  At some point, he had removed his gas mask, but he couldn’t remember doing it.  The rain had let up to a light drizzle.

He was fully aware that he could have walked right past Eren and not have known it.  There were plenty of soldiers running around in the low light without carrying lamps.  He couldn’t make out their faces unless he practically ran into them.

A surge of impotence crawled up through his body like a clawed animal.

It was too dark to search.

Levi knew he should make his way back to Erwin’s bunker where he had the best chance of finding getting information until morning came.

His head dropped and he could just barely make out the toes of his boots in the gloom.  He was trembling, severely.

He had no idea how many soldiers he had run past and not seen Eren’s face. 

His heart thumped dully in his ears, a slow bass that seemed at odds with what he was certain was a creeping panic.  He was cold and soaked, nausea still choking him, and he had never been more terrified in his life.

Having bullets whiz over his head was preferable.

He had always managed to find Eren shortly after every attack if he hadn’t already been with him until now. 

Levi let his head fall back and stared at the sky, watching dark clouds rolls over the moon, blocking most of the stars.  His throat was raw and belatedly he realized it was because he was yelling Eren’s name.

It echoed into the distance.

He stumbled over to a wall and sat down on the trench board, head still tilted to the sky.  The rain had stopped.

He sat there for a while.  He didn’t know how long.

Levi stared at the clouds overhead, resolutely not thinking about anything, hesitating to go back to Erwin’s bunker, unwilling to have his fears confirmed and made awfully, solidly real.

He became dimly aware of approaching footsteps and then the light of a kerosene lamp washed over him.

“Levi?”

His head snapped down and he pinned the speaker with sharp eyes.

He didn’t trust his voice to work properly.  Words were an unknowable jumble in his mind that couldn’t be detangled into anything coherent.

Eren stood before him beautifully whole.  He looked equal measures worried and relieved.

“I heard you shouting... I think you called me a useless shit fucker.”

Levi wasn’t sure what he had yelled earlier.

Apparently insults.

In an instant, he was on his feet and closing the distance between them, needing physical touch to confirm that Eren was more than a product of the ether. 

His hands landed on firm shoulders, solid and chilled, but very much alive. 

“You’re okay, aren’t you?” Eren asked, trepidation coloring his words.

Levi didn’t answer, he gripped the shoulders his hands rested on tighter and pulled Eren to him, arms falling to clutch like steel wires around the younger soldier.  After a moment, he felt Eren relax a little, although the arm holding the kerosene lamp was awkwardly aloft.

“I’m fine.  I got stuck back by the artillery line and ended up helping to reload them.  I’m fine, I’m all right… I’m alive... you’re alive… we’re fine,” Eren murmured, gripping Levi back with his free arm.  Levi didn’t know he was still trembling until Eren had him pulled against his body.  The faint shivers from the younger boy were mostly unnoticeable.  Eren was unfairly steady by comparison. 

They stood like that for an interminable amount of time.

Eventually, Levi pulled back, a grimace on his face.

“You’re soaked.”

“I wasn’t half so bad until you decided to hug me.  Did you flop around in a puddle to see what hypothermia feels like?” Eren’s voice was still edged with softness.

“You may not be aware of this, but it was raining,” Levi replied, drily.

“Yes, I know.  I told you it was going to.  Are we going to stay here or are we going to find our packs and see if any of our spare clothes managed to stay dry and then hopefully change into them?  I think we’re standing in a lake.”

Levi looked down and saw that the rainwater was covering the tops of his boots.  His toes squelched disgustingly when he wiggled them.  He hoped he wouldn’t get trench foot later.

At Levi’s expression, Eren laughed.

“The design flaw of a trench is that as the low point of a field it becomes the primary drainage point.”

“The design flaw of a trench is that it’s disgusting.  Do you think any of the rats drowned?” Levi asked.

Eren patted his shoulder and didn’t answer.

“I hope they’re all dead.”

“Me too.”

“Rats are gross.  Living in a pit is idiotic and gas is a horrible way to kill people.”

“I don’t think I like this war either, so we should probably quit and go home,” Eren said, walking away.

Levi didn’t hesitate to follow.  There was nowhere on Earth he _wouldn’t_ follow.

They came across Eren’s dugout first; the younger soldier crawled in, grabbed his pack and crawled back out, then gestured at Levi to lead the way.

Levi’s dugout was located in the further west in the support trench.  The entrance started halfway up the revetment at Levi’s waist to prevent water pouring from a flooded trench to the inside.  Eren didn’t hesitate to pull the canvas flap covering the opening away, climb in, toss his knapsack in a corner and started stripping off his wet uniform.  Levi halted halfway in the entrance with his hands steadied on the wood shoring up the walls, eyes wide in the flickering light of the lamp.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Levi said, voice remarkably steady when he climbed the rest of the way in, pulling the canvas closed.   He removed his own clothes, pulling damp fabric from the cold skin it clung to.  They wordlessly redressed and laid their wet uniforms on a wood shelf built out of what looked like a railroad tie jammed into the side of one of the walls.

The dugout wasn’t large by any means.  The walls were lined with boards and the roof with wooden beams for structural support.  It was tall enough to stand in and at knee height it had a timber platform extending from the walls to act as a bunk for sleeping on.  There was enough room for two or three grown men to lay on it, with an identical bunk above it.  Eren spread his bedroll out on the lower and then laid Levi’s next to it.

Levi, for his part, was beginning to think his heart would explode.  It was starting to hurt with how much it had banged around in his ribs that day.  It was probably bruised.  He wondered if that was a health concern.

He still had glimpses of Eren shirtless and damp flickering through his mind.  His stomach fluttered.  Levi was beginning to accept that his body was in the pre-stages of a massive failure.

Eren placed their knapsacks at the heads of the bedrolls and then spread the blankets out before turning to look at Levi.

“Are you coming?”

“We haven’t eaten supper yet,” Levi heard himself speak; because of course he would say the stupidest thing to enter his head, _ever_.

“I’m not sure I could keep any food down.  Look, I’m still shaking,” Eren said, raising a trembling hand for Levi’s inspection.  “I’m not sure if this is still nerves or if I’m really in danger of hypothermia, but I would appreciate it if you would come here so I could leech all of your body heat away for my own survival.”

Levi complied, crawling over to Eren and slipping under the blanket.  The younger soldier immediately slid over to latch onto him, clutching with shaking hands.

Eren Yeager was more dangerous than any military strike could ever be to Levi.

It only took a couple of minutes for Eren to pass out, but Levi was wound tightly, brain periodically shorting out as he tried to think of anything but the body pressed to his back.  Eren’s arm was thrown over his waist, soft breaths rhythmic against the back of his neck, and the idiot was completely unaware of the havoc he was wreaking on Levi.

The overwhelming relief he had been feeling since he had laid eyes on Eren in the light of the kerosene lamp was now replaced with dawning terror.  It was the way his body automatically relaxed into Eren’s.  It was the feeling that despite being in a dug out dirt cave in the middle of a war, as soon as he felt Eren’s embrace, he knew he was home.  This stupid affection he felt for the kid was something so much worse than an unasked for attraction.

The realization came with being simultaneously overheated in his chest and chilled down his spine.

Levi was fairly certain he was in love with the idiot.

“Fuck.”

Eren stirred behind him.  “Mmm huh?”

“Nothing, go to sleep.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.  Shut up and sleep.”

“Night Levi.”

“…Good night Eren.”

Levi didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this one came from a line of research where I learned how "shell shock" became "battle fatigue" etc. until it was labelled "PTSD". The word resilience kept popping up and I began to think about how when there is something you want but you don't think you should have, your strength of will probably isn't going to be consistent throughout the longing process. The right push at the right time could have you crumble. Like when you have cheesecake in the fridge and you're trying not to think about it but then someone else mentions that cheesecake and you're like, "Fuck it, I'm eating it all." So I wrote this, where Eren is Levi's cheesecake. He's not eating it yet, but it's only a matter of time.
> 
> I have also purposefully neglected to mention what side of the war they're on or their ranks, because 1) I want this series to be about the relationship between two soldiers and not muck it up with politics and 2) ranks differed from country to country and branch to branch. Many that existed then no longer exist now and I was having a hell of a time finding a good source for that time period.


End file.
